Leadtek WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme

Until recently, if you wanted a GeForce 7900 GS you'd have to pick up a machine from Dell. Well that's changing now as there are a few manufacturers releasing this card to the building public. Leadtek was kind enough to send us one of their cards so today we're going to look at the WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme. Let's see how this card stacks up.

The WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme is a PCI-E card built on the 90nm process. At the heart of the card is the G71 GPU with some changes. 20 pixel shader pipelines and 7 vertex shader units are on this card rather than 24 pixel shader pipelines and 8 vertex shader units of the 7900 GT. A normal GeForce 7900 GS will run at 450MHz for the core and 1.32GHz for the memory. But this is no ordinary GeForce 7900. We're talking Extreme here folks so there's a little overclocking on this card right out of the box. The WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme sits at 520MHz for the GPU and 1.4GHz for the memory. That's a nice little 70MHz increase in the core and 80MHz increase in the memory. I've always liked Leadtek's Extreme line that gives you a little more for a small premium in price and Leadtek doesn't disappoint here. 256MB of GDDR3 memory rounds out the features of this card.

From the looks, you can see the card looks pretty close to the reference design. There's a nice little Leadtek branding with the black/blue heatsink fan to help cool the card down. I would've liked to have seen Leadtek do something to the card to help separate it from other manufacturers but that's not too big of a deal. As with all NVIDIA PCI-E cards these days, the WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme also has an SLI link at the top so if you want to improve your graphical performance by sticking another card with it on an SLI motherboard, you're free to do so.

A variable speed fan is on this card which is a welcomed feature. When not using the 3D functions, the card's really quiet. Even when running 3D applications, the card's fan wasn't that loud or overly annoying. One of my test setups include a fanless NForce board and I was able to get a pretty quiet setup with the PX7900 GS TDH Extreme in the system. Overall I was quite pleased with the change to include the variable speed on the fan.

Sizewise, the card isn't as long as the GeForce 7800GT card that I compare this with. There is the six pin power connector as this card does need some extra juice that the PCI-E bus cannot fully provide. Leadtek has included a cable to convert two Molex connectors to one PCI-E power connector.

The card is also HDCP capable. What that means is that if you want to use this card to view high definition content through a digital connection, you'll be able to view it as long as you connect to an HDCP capable display device. With HD DVD and Blu-ray becoming available for computer users, you'll need HDCP capable products to view them on your PC. While you can still connect this card to a TV using the included component connectors for some high definition viewing, you'll want a card with HDCP for the future when you want to connect the card using the digital connection.

Output for the card consists of two DVI connectors for dual monitor support. If you want to attach it to a television, Leadtek has included a pigtail that houses component connections as well as an S-VGA out. If your monitor is the old VGA style, there's also an included adapter to convert the DVI connection. I've used a few Leadtek cards to connect my HTPC to my LCD television with the component connector and it does a very good job when you don't have anymore digital connections.

A few pieces of software is included when you pick up this card. The usual array of Leadtek tools comes bundled with the card and two games: Serious Sam 2 and Spell Force 2: Shadow Wars. Serious Sam 2 might be a little long on the tooth but Spell Force 2: Shadow Wars is a little more recent and offers a nice little blend of RPG and real time strategy.

So how much is this card coming in at? The WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme will have a price of $229 or a $20 markup over the non-Extreme version. It's positioned to compete with ATI's X1900 GT for your midrange dollars. We don't have an X1900 GT in the labs here yet to test against this card but we'll be sure to see how it matches up to it once we get one in. For now, we'll see how it compares to a 7800 GT card near the same price.Our test setup included:

AMD64 X2 3800+

ECS KA3 MVP Extreme

1 GIG Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 (2 sticks)

Seagate 160GIG 7200RPM HDD

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 2

NVIDIA 91.47 drivers

First up is Futuremark's 3D Mark 06.

3DMark®06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. A fundamental tool for every company in the PC industry as well as PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today. We tested at the standard 1280x1024 resolution.

Quake 4 is Raven Software's true sequel to the id classic. The game uses an improved Doom 3 engine for some great graphics. For the test we ran a demo featuring a few enemies and some squad mates. We set the graphics qualities at maximum and ran it on three different resolutions.

One of the surprise hits out of Monolith was F.E.A.R. This supernatural FPS looks incredible and really pushes a video card to its limits. For the benchmark, we ran three resolutions using the in game benchmark with all the settings set at max.

Valve's game uses their own Source engine to produce some impressive results especially giving us such features as HDR and some great physics. The Lost Coast demo was used in the benchmark with all settings set at maximum. Three resolutions were selected for this test as well.

Prey has been in development for many years but the folks at Human Head finally released the game this year. The game utilizes the Doom 3 engine like Quake 4 and features the really cool Portal technology to garner some interesting game play aspects. All settings were set to maximum and three resolutions were chosen for the test.

To test out how much of a performance decrease we get when turning on such features as anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, we ran the same benchmarks at both 4xAA 8xAF and 8xAA 16xAF. Here are the results for the 4xAA 8xAF tests:

And here are the results for 8xAA 16xAF.

Compared to a GeForce 7800GT the WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme comes out ahead in most tests. At low resolutions, the 7800GT does win some of the benchmarks but as you increase the resolution the GeForce 7900GS card comes out on top. This coming from a card that will run almost $100 less than the GeForce 7800GT card. From the tests you can see that's a pretty good amount of performance for the price you pay for.

Leadtek's WinFast PX7900 GS TDH Extreme is a great value. You get an overclock on the card out of the box and performance that compares to and beats a card that's almost $100 more. Pair up two of these boys and you should get some nice performance for $440. The bundle isn't anything to write home about and the card doesn't have any changes over a reference design but Leadtek has produced a very good solid card.

I'd like to thank Leadtek for providing the sample and to Crucial for coming in in a pinch with some memory. Check out their Ballistix memory we used as it's quality stuff.

The card performs great and it's priced nicely as well. You get a little overclock out of the box. It also runs very quiet.

Rating: 8.7 Very Good

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company for review.

About Author

I've been reviewing products since 1997 and started out at Gaming Nexus. After writing for a few different sites that went under, it's nice to bring back a site that's not dependent on revenue and just wants to deliver news and reviews of products.